The present invention relates generally to the field of computer programming, and more particularly to tools for manipulation of visual elements.
A user interface for a computer allows users to interact with electronic devices through graphical icons and visual indicators. A user can perform tasks by directly manipulating the graphical elements. Designing the visual composition and behavior of a user interface is an important part of software application programming in the area of human-computer interaction. A goal of a user interface is to enhance the efficiency and ease of use for the underlying logical design of a computer program. Users within various fields of computer science rely on the efficient functionality of a user interface. For example, text mining, in general, is the process of extracting quality information from text through tasks that include tasks include text categorization, text clustering, annotation/tagging, concept/entity extraction, production of granular taxonomies, document summarization, and entity relation modeling.
Current solutions for various text mining operations are typically cumbersome and ineffective. For example, user interface designs for text annotation operations for a document often display the text entities close together and in the same or similar arrangement as found in the document. This can cause some annotations of text entities to be close together or to overlap, preventing a user from efficient manipulation of the text entities and from effectively annotating the entities of the document. Additionally, user interface designs for text annotation operations often can not effectively display the entities being annotated while also displaying the underlying document, preventing a user from effectively organizing the entities for annotation operations.